ipmitool fails to change boot mode to PXE-boot on UEFI-based server

[Rod Smith]

I've tried to use ipmitool to change a server's configuration from local-disk booting to PXE-booting using ipmitool, thus:

ipmitool -H 172.24.25.53 -U ubuntu -P passwd chassis bootdev pxe

The man page suggests this should work, although it doesn't explicitly mention EFI/UEFI-mode operation. In practice, though, it did not work. I've tried it against three servers:

* Lenovo x3550 M5 with a 2.31 EFI "by EDK II"
* Lenovo x3650 M5 with a 2.31 EFI "by EDK II"
* Dell PowerEdge T110 2.10 EFI "by Dell"

I've tried numerous variants, including in-band and out-of band, running the command out-of-band when the target server is powered on vs. powered off, rebooting or powering up via ipmitool vs. locally, and forcing PXE-booting from a local disk boot and vice versa. (I haven't tried every combination of server and test, but I've tried many of them.) In all cases, ipmitool has had no effect; the server has booted or rebooted in the way it was configured to boot locally, via efibootmgr.

It's unclear to me if this is a bug in ipmitool, a limitation of the IPMI protocol with respect to EFI-based systems, or a limitation of the test servers.

Requested version information:

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS
Release: 14.04

$ apt-cache policy ipmitool
ipmitool:
  Installed: 1.8.13-1ubuntu0.2
  Candidate: 1.8.13-1ubuntu0.2
  Version table:
 *** 1.8.13-1ubuntu0.2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.8.13-1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages